Fathers
Wendell Bliss (of the weak heart and well-known son Will) found a cheerful salad—red and yellow peppers cut in cubes like confetti—left by the housekeeper on the counter. There was a lukewarm chicken breast dressed up with parsley and little potatoes that he could reheat in the microwave if he knew where to find it. Stumped again by the serene expanse of stainless steel. Only the hooded restaurant stove with its prominent grillwork over the burners was apparent to him, but Viking was a word that came with men in horned helmets, and Wendell Bliss wouldn't think to touch the stove. He ate his lukewarm food; he ate slowly. After a while Marion Bliss phoned from Florida to check on what had been left him for dinner. He told her, and then he told her about Will and how he had said yes to an advance on the boy's allowance. He told his wife about Astra Dell, too, because he knew she would want to know. His wife knew so many people—they knew so many people—and one of her chief pleasures was rooting out what connected them. She was fond of saying, "Six degrees of separation!" The discovery of parallel experience and pattern was satisfying to his wife, but the unfairness in the allocations of suffering was something to ponder, that was a lozenge to suck on and so fall to sleep.
CHF
Car Forestal made art out of what was on her plate.
"It isn't fattening," her mother said, but Car said the sauce was tasteless, and she pooled it in potatoes, which she never ate. "You know I don't."
Mrs. Forestal said she didn't know why she bothered with a cook, and Car said she didn't know why either. Mrs. Forestal said she tried to please, and Car said don't. Mrs. Forestal asked Car was she this way in school, and Car said which way? Mrs. Forestal said don't bother, and Car said she wouldn't. Nothing she did was right, Mrs. Forestal said, and Car said no, nothing she, Car, did was right.
"I can't talk to you."
"I can't talk to you either."
"Every night this."
"I can't please you, Mother. Nothing pleases you."
"That's not true."
"You're always on my case."
"I am not."
"Listen to yourself sometime; you are."
"Don't be smart, Carlotta."
"I'm not being."
"You're excused, then."
"But I'm not finished."
"You are. You're only playing with your food."
"Okay, if you want me out..."
"Don't run off to your father's."
"I'm not."
"I know you."
"No, you don't."
"I'm warning you."
"Yeah, what are you going to do?"
"Don't leave this house ... Carlotta."
"I'm going out for a walk. Can I go out for a walk, Mother? My best friend is very sick, okay? I need to be by myself for a while, okay? I need to get out of this place."
Siddons
Dembroski, checking off attendance in senior-class meeting, was calling out, "Decrow? Has anyone seen Alex Decrow?"
"After ninth grade no one ever makes perfect attendance," Kitty Johnson said to Car. "What happens to us all in tenth grade?"
In tenth grade Mrs. Dell was killed in an accident, not so uncommon in the city: An out-of-control car drives onto a sidewalk. In Mrs. Dell's case, a taxi driver had a stroke and drove onto the sidewalk, injuring three and killing one, Grace Dell. The news flared in the papers, a photograph, and then hissed out.
Grace Dell, Dies at 44; October 4,1994. All those fours: four-four, four, four; four fours. "I bought into numerology for a while," Car said, then felt quick Quirk at the back of her neck wetly shushing: shush.
"I hope you know you're sitting at the Fat Table," Elizabeth F. said.
Greta Varislyvski seemed not to care or hear or even really see them but pulled her long self along the lunch bench until she was seated across from the two Elizabeths, Elizabeth F. and Elizabeth G.
Greta Varislyvski dully repeated, "Fat Table," as if she were answering the roll. Here was space to sit, and she had taken it. She was hungry. "I like to eat, too," she said. "All these girls counting calories. I'm not one of those."
The two Elizabeths were delighted then and told Greta she was welcome at the Fat Table anytime. The soy-cream sandwiches were under discussion. The Elizabeths knew that the soy-cream sandwiches they served in the cafeteria were disgusting, but they liked them, anyway. Elizabeth F. liked strawberry and Elizabeth G., raspberry cheesecake. Elizabeth G. insisted raspberry cheesecake was better. "It is, it is, it is," she said, and knocked against the other Elizabeth.
Greta Varislyvski made a face that might have been a laugh.
"Please," Elizabeth F. said, "don't yuck-yuck my yum-yum."
Suki an d Alex
"Please," Suki said, "I'm eating."
"I'm glad you are. I don't know what this is."
"A Caesar salad?"
"Really?" and she held up a square piece of iceberg. "What's the good of being rich, if I'm going to end up eating at Two Guys! Suki, I will pay whatever it costs never to eat at Two Guys again."
"Wow."
"Look," Alex said, "I don't want to be with the hoi polloi—that's the name of it, isn't it?" She said, "I know I am just a terrible snob, but honestly, Suki, why are we saving money? What's the point?"
"Something else is the matter, and I know what it is."
"Don't talk about him."
"I'm bored," Suki said. "Maybe after our salads, we should get our feet hennaed."
Siddons
The senior-class Halloween morning meeting was notable for the number of girls who came dressed as skinny icons: Car Forestal came as Audrey Hepburn, and Alex Decrow swagged around in short shorts as Dr. Holly Goodhead, with a fake knife and a conch. Suki, aka Twiggy, did up her enormous eyes and batted them at Dr. Meltzer, saying, "Can you guess who I am?"
"Death?" he tried.
Marlene Kovack was unusually ironic and came as Carrie in a blood-splattered prom queen's dress. Ufia, the black princess, wore a fruit headpiece and carried maracas but was obliged to explain herself as Carmen Miranda. "Doesn't anyone watch Turner Classics?" Edie Cohen and Kitty Johnson came as a couple, Raggedy Ann and Andy, and Sarah Saperstein and Ny Song, another senior couple, came as a Big Mac and french fries.
"Really sexy," Alex said to Ny.
The boom-box girls were singing along with Sheryl Crow, "If it makes you happy, it can't be that bad..."
Francesca Fratini was a "fun food" and came as a banana, and there were the usual number of witches, a policewoman with a riding crop, and a criminal in ball and chains, but the parade fell apart when a yodeling Heidi in a dirndl skated into the fun foods and knocked Fratini down. Lisa Van de Ven in a nurse's outfit with breasts as big as hams and padded hips came to the rescue, and Dr. D, in devil's horns and carrying a pitchfork, stood up to say, "Dismissed. To hell with you all!"
Fa La Lah
CHF
Car had tried to write it as a story, but it always came out an essay, a pushy essay full of complaint. "My father was using me to get his boyfriends" missed the real complications of Paris last spring. Walking arm in arm with her father through the lobby of Georges V had been fun. Was she mistress or daughter? He was purring corrections: "poissons de...not poisons de" and she was saying, "I am taking AP French, Dad. I ought to know."
Her father's frown was little; his skin was taut and cared for. "Oh, my daddy is a handsome man!" Fragrant and languorous, a man interested in pleasure, delights of all kinds. Museums and jazz. She could write this out, but it lacked what she saw when he walked away from her; she wasn't sure she could put it in words. She knew where he was in the dark recesses of a glassy bar, but she could not see his face. He came back eventually. On his own—he didn't need her—Car's father always fished up a beauty, a man, a man and a woman, a man and a woman and another man. He knew them from somewhere; he met them at the bar. Her father brought them all to the table, but Car was the one who entertained them, or so it seemed to her, answering questions about Siddons, talking Virgil
and Sally Mann, Auden and Philip Larkin. Until it was late, midnight, a bit later, then her father took her back to the hotel and saw her to bed before he returned to the party.
Once at a café in an always dank, poor part of town, a yellow light over a table, a damp floor, once here, rushed to for shelter from the rain, breathless, cold, her father touched her. Her father was plucking her wet shirt away from her breasts. "Dad," she said. "Do you mind?" She was no mistress then; then she was his daughter.
"I'm sixteen," Car said to Madame de Ratignole at a cocktail party in honor of a well-known art critic. Car didn't know the art critic's name; she was in AP French lit. They were reading Le Père Goriot.
"Yes," said the hostess, who happened to be Dutch and knew six, seven, eight languages—something like that—enough to make Car feel embarrassed. Bumptious was a word she had learned from her father and should use to describe herself.
But was that party really such a good idea for a college essay?
Mothers
Surely Theta Kovack in the first week of November was the last parent to confer with the school's college adviser to decide on Marlene's college list. She sat in the cubby that passed for an office with its weary rah-rah wall of faded pennants; the office was humid—from crying? Theta sat in a saggy chair and scratched what she thought was a bite in the crook of her arm. The process, Mrs. Quirk was saying, was exciting. Think of every college applied to as a first choice. Marlene, who sat next to her mother, was pulling off the pills on her uniform skirt, and she did not look up when either woman spoke.
"Marlene," Theta said. "We're talking about you."
"Yes."
"Did you hear what Mrs. Quirk just said, then?"
"All the choices are first choices."
"So what are your firsts?" Mrs. Quirk asked.
Marlene, still worrying the skirt, said, "Wesleyan."
The adviser snorted. "A moon shot," she said. "What else?"
"Brown."
"Marlene, you and I have talked before," Mrs. Quirk said.
Theta was studying the map behind the adviser with the pushpins of where last year's class had landed. The largest constellation of pushpins was in New England, but a lone pin in Florida and another in Arizona suggested there were other girls without the numbers who had landed somewhere.
" Think," Theta said to her daughter.
The two women looked at each other, and then they looked at Marlene, who was scratching her leg with the sharp heel of her shoe, making scratch marks wide as a ruler up and down her leg.
"Marlene," Theta said with angrier insistence, "you've had months to consider. What have you been doing?"
"I've been taking notes for Astra Dell. I've been visiting her and reading to her. What college is she applying to?" Marlene's expression when she looked at the college adviser was all chin.
The college adviser smiled. "That's not to the point, Marlene, and an expedient use of Astra Dell. What schools are you applying to, that's the question on the table."
This from "Quirky," the woman Marlene had described as always out of the office when a girl needed her. Quirky forgot a girl's name and where it was she hoped to be next September. Quirk was all numbers. Fifty, 75, 95 percent chances hyphened against the names of colleges on a final list she okayed. The witch wrote letters about every senior; she was the one to broker deals, and she had her favorites. Mrs. Quirk's favorites were sassy, scrappy, outspoken girls with no moon shots. Ufia, Darnell, Krystle, Karen, Teenie—she called them the Sisterhood; Mrs. Quirk was entirely confident of where the Sisterhood would land.
"I see you've got someone in Arizona," Theta said.
"The University of Arizona, yes, we have two girls there. You remember Mary Kate O'Neill, Marlene? She is very happy there."
"What about New York University?"
"What about it?"
Theta interrupted, "What about Wisconsin?"
"Now there you are," Mrs. Quirk said, with nods to Theta again and then eye to eye with Marlene. "You've a 75 percent chance of getting in, Marlene."
The Siddons School was all numbers, and Theta was adding them up. She was adding up six years of Siddons education. Here was math. Six years of her ex-husband saying, "Why not keep Marlene in public school? It was good enough for us." Six years of her own scramble. Loans and the interest on those loans. Theta was glad he wasn't here to hear what was good enough for Marlene. Marlene's choices were not the choices Theta had hoped—hoped perhaps unreasonably—to hear. If they had money, Marlene could afford to be a goof. But Theta was a receptionist at a dentist's office where retainers cost almost as much as she made in a month, and the privileged children with their crooked teeth kept losing them.
Oh! Last night's Chinese food was rising in Theta's throat; she would burp with her mouth shut and smile, but so many shames gusted in her: her cheap shoes, the floppy sack meant to pass for a purse, and other, more hurtful details—thin hair, no waist, tired hands. Middle class! She was ugly and average—not very smart. She reached over and covered Marlene's hand with hers. "We should look into Wisconsin." Theta said, "We should look into Syracuse. Daddy and I liked it there."
"Marlene should look," Mrs. Quirk corrected, and Theta felt slapped, and she burped.
Mrs. Forestal came into the head of school's office and saw that the school nurse and Car's English teacher, Miss Hodd, were also in attendance for this meeting that the head of school, Miss Brigham, had arranged.
"An emissary from the lower school was just here with news we have more rabbits," Miss Brigham said, and her expression, Mrs. Forestal noted, was kindly.
More puffy talk ensued.
Miss Brigham motioned they sit, which the three women did, in a circle around Miss Brigham's partner's desk. The desk was the only real antique in the room and had belonged to Miss Siddons herself. Miss Brigham now stood behind it. "We won't take up your time, Mrs. Forestal," Miss Brigham said. "We have some concerns about Carlotta."
"Thank you, Miss Brigham, for refraining from using her nickname." Mrs. Forestal said to the nurse, "Her father thought it up and sadly it's stuck."
"Miss Hodd?" Miss Brigham asked Carlotta's English teacher to begin, and she did, with a lot of background—Car, Folio, the honor, Car as editor—but eventually got to the important part about a recent submission. Car's own work. "I told Car I felt obliged to show this story to the nurse, and she said she understood. She really didn't seem to mind, which made me wonder: Maybe this is a fiction, but I didn't want to take a chance." Now Miss Hodd gave a copy of the story to Mrs. Forestal.
"Does Carlotta see much of her father?" Miss Brigham asked.
"She hopes to see him over spring break."
"So she does see him?"
"She saw him last spring break."
"Dr. D says Car is worried about going to Paris," Miss Hodd said.
"Please, Carlotta is always worried about something."
The women made signs of agreement or understanding, of course; but the nurse asked, "Does she seem more anxious than usual?"
" There's Astra Dell, but frankly we don't much talk about Astra because there isn't much to say, is there?"
The nurse bowed her head, but when she looked up, she asked, "Carlotta has some eating issues, too, doesn't she?"
"I think so, yes."
The nurse said, "We think we should act before it gets more serious, Mrs. Forestal."
Mrs. Forestal spoke absently. "Yes," she said.
The nurse was more emphatic. "We think it is serious enough to warrant intervention."
"You think so?" Mrs. Forestal winced at the sound of her own voice, a high, stupid sound. Then she said again, "Yes," the gentle word, and she took up the sleeve of her sable coat and smelled it, which was to smell herself, her own sweet, perfumed, rich self. Then she could look up. Mrs. Forestal looked up at these women—the nurse, the English teacher, and the head of school—i n wonder at their kindness. "I'm grateful you thought to call."
Miss Brigham said, "Of c
ourse. We love Car. There you go. I guess the nickname fits. We want the tomboy back."
"So do I." Mrs. Forestal began abruptly and only to Miss Brigham, saying, "I haven't read this story. My daughter doesn't share her work with me. She is a very neat girl at home. I don't go into her room."
"Of course."
"I understand," said the nurse.
Miss Brigham and Miss Hodd and the nurse, all three sat erect and ready. They wanted to work with Mrs. Forestal. They wanted to look out for Carlotta was all. And with Mrs. Forestal's help, they believed they could address whatever it was that was making it hard for Carlotta to sleep at home.
"She is doing as well as ever. Her teachers give her very good reports, but she often goes to the nurse with headaches."
"She comes up to sleep in her frees."
Sleeping or not sleeping, apparently, was part of the story.
Mrs. Forestal said, "I see Carlotta coming out of her bedroom every morning." Her voice washed out as if she weren't sure of this fact as she sat in a room, conspiratorially well-intentioned. "I've seen Carlotta eat dinner." She sniffed at her coat sleeve again and reconsidered. "Well, maybe it's just playing with dinner. She eats with her baby pusher and fork, I'm ashamed to say."
The nurse was making little sounds again.
"I'm thin," Mrs. Forestal said.
A generally uttered, quiet "Yes" from the nurse, the English teacher, the head of school, then Mrs. Forestal heard the rustle of her own slip against her wool suit, heard the shush of her arms as she drew up her sable. She was thankful to be rich. "Yes," she said, accepting recommendations, some telephone numbers.
All Souls Page 4